Ibaka, Thunder clamping down on Spurs’ offense

So, it turns out that adding a tall, long and ridiculously athletic defender to your lineup — even one dealing with a calf injury that was thought to have potentially ended his season — make a huge difference.

It would be simplistic to give Oklahoma City forward Serge Ibaka ALL of the credit for turning the Western Conference Finals around for the Thunder, who thumped the Spurs for a second straight game on Tuesday to knot the series up at 2-2 entering Thursday’s Game 5.

Among other key developments over the past two games were Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook remembering that they’re Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, and Oklahoma City coach Scott Brooks making several key fixes to his rotation, particularly banishing the ineffective Nick Collison and Thabo Sefolosha.

But any assessment has to start with Ibaka, whose rim protection, mobility and sheer presence has rendered the Spurs’ motion offense — likened to listening to Mozart by Washington center Marcin Gortat — to the equivalent of a baby banging on pots and pans.

So porous during the first two games, the Thunder have tightened up like a piece of meat being vacuum-packed for freezing in their recent victories.

They probably would have improved by some measure simply by virtue of how poor they were in Game 1, giving up 66 of 122 points in the paint as the Spurs did virtually whatever they want. But it can hardly be a coincidence that such improvement has spiked in the past two games with Ibaka, who has seven blocked shots and probably at least as many altered since his unexpected return from the injured list.

It all revolves around Ibaka, a living, breathing chunk of Kryptonite with whom the Thunder have won seven straight meetings and 12 of the past 14 in the lineup. The Spurs are averaging just 95.3 points per 100 possessions in that span when Ibaka is on the court, compared to 107.2/100 when he’s off.

Such was the case on Tuesday, when the Spurs’ production rate dropped by roughly 14 points during Ibaka’s 35 minutes.

“All of a sudden we were going to see if Serge could block a shot or something,” said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich of Game 4, in which the Spurs were outscored by 35 points after taking a quick 8-0 lead. “I thought about passing a picture out on the bench. They’d know who Serge was. But really unwise basketball all of a sudden. Instead of hitting open people that are out there, we started to attack the rim unwisely, and that turns into blocked shots.

“You’ve got to play smarter against such great athletes. The athleticism and the length gives you a small margin of error, and you’d better be smart the way you play and you can’t afford to screw that up as many times as we did.”

Tiago Splitter, so solid for most of the postseason, scored just three points on 1 for 3 shooting. Tim Duncan wasn’t much better, missing 5 of 8 shots en route to nine points — one more than Matt Bonner in nine more minutes. Between them they had almost as many shots blocked (three) as field goals (four).

Then there was Tony Parker, who despite bouncing back from one of the worst playoff performances of his career in Game 3 was unable to generate any consistent looks for his teammate outside the first few minutes.

The Spurs shot 45 percent in the paint on Tuesday, their worst in the playoffs. Their previous low? Game 3, at 47.6 percent. And in the span of two games, the Spurs have gone from borderline invincibility to seemingly playing at a different speed than their younger, more athletic opponent.

“We just play well with Serge,” Brooks said. “We can do things with Serge in the lineup that we can’t do with other guys.”

Popovich might be able to tweak his lineup like Brooks did his, perhaps by finding more minutes for Boris Diaw in the hopes of dragging Ibaka away from the paint.

If the Spurs don’t find a solution for their perennial scourge soon, they’ll be on vacation far sooner than expected after crushing Oklahoma City in the first two games by a combined 52 points.